Corporate philanthropy and employee wellbeing: do types of corporate philanthropy matter?

This study examines whether corporate philanthropy, one corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity, influences employee wellbeing. Based on a panel dataset of listed companies in Taiwan, our empirical analyses obtained by using a panel data model show that engagement and charitable donations are irrelevant to employee wage packages. Dividing donation expenditures into donations to firm-related foundations and donations to unrelated recipients, donations to firm-related foundations have no influence on wage packages. By contrast, irregular and unscheduled donations, namely, donations to unrelated recipients, have a negative association with employee wage packages. The results remain the same using propensity score matching (PSM) and system generalized method of moments to conduct robustness checks. The first-stage PSM estimations on the determinants of corporate philanthropy indicate that firm characteristics such as firm size, firm age, earning performance, and stakeholders are factors influencing charitable donations.